These are the catch-all excuses that are stopping YOU achieving your dreams. You may like to think of them as reasons but, in reality, they’re nothing more than EXCUSES and you need to stop making them.

By understanding a little more about why we make excuses, it’ll make it easier to stop making them.

Excuses are LEARNED behaviour. You made a mistake as you were growing up (chances are many mistakes if you’re even halfway human), came up with a blinder of an excuse as to why you made the mistake and managed to wriggle out of the consequences. As a result, each time you make a mistake, are confronted by something that’s going to push you out of your comfort zone or fail to achieve something you want, in an attempt to wriggle out of the consequences you come up with a reason why you did or didn’t/should or shouldn’t do it (read here EXCUSE). If you didn’t come up with a good enough excuse to avoid the consequence altogether, this is where the good old catch-all excuse of “I had a bad childhood.” has a chance to shine.

Excuse making can start out incredibly innocuously but when we manage to avoid consequences by placing blame elsewhere (as with the catch-alls “It’s not my fault, I had a bad childhood/nobody taught me/the teacher was incompetent/the government changed the laws/the local council suddenly put no parking signs there/there are NO jobs/I live in a lousy neighbourhood, etc.”), THAT is when the rot really starts to set in. It becomes worse because this “I’m a victim” mentality becomes a bigger part of your personality that starts to poke its rather large nose in whenever you need to solve a problem and without you really being conscious of it. Rather than taking responsibility for your actions/decisions/inactions yourself, your Inner Imps Laziness, Self-Preservation, Fear et al, seek to push the “blame” for the consequences of these actions/decisions/inactions, be the consequence a lack of something, failure to achieve a goal, poor result, jail term, parking ticket, etc., onto someone or something else.

If you’ve found yourself drifting into this “victim mentality”, it may be THAT which is at the root of any disappointment you may be feeling about the way your life is going. The chances are, it’s this mentality that is stopping you going for your dreams and NOT the person/thing/circumstances that you’re blaming.

Easier said than done I know but, like I said at the beginning, everything is difficult at first, stick with it and taking responsibility and control of your life really does get a lot easier and bring with it huge benefits. If you want to change your life for the better, make an effort NOT an excuse.